Hermeneutics in psychotherapy : a study of interpretation in the context of the psychotherapeutic dialogue
- Authors: Kelly, Kevin John
- Date: 1994
- Subjects: Insight in psychotherapy Psychotherapy -- Methodology
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:3199 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009515
- Description: The central aim of this study was to contribute to the understanding of the process of interpretation as it occurs in the context of a dialogue in insight-oriented psychotherapy. The literature review consisted of two parts. Firstly, the philosophical literature on the theory of interpretation was reviewed. A set of central philosophical issues was identified, which pertain to the psychotherapeutic project of interpreting the meaning of a person's experience in the context of a dialogue with that person. Secondly, the psychotherapeutic literature was reviewed. Previous attempts to conceptualise and prescribe processes of interpretation were described. The issues which appeared to be in need of further clarification were identified. A clinical study was conducted to further explore the questions raised in the literature reviews. A methodology was developed which gave access to the direct experience of both clients and therapists during the events of psychotherapeutic interpretation. The methodology yielded a description of the interpretative structure of the psychotherapeutic dialogue for each therapist-client pair. These were then consolidated into a description of general structural features of the psychotherapeutic dialogue. The results consisted of a description of processes and structural features which are intrinsic to the psychotherapeutic interpretation of the meaning of a person's experience in the context of a dialogue. The results were elaborated in an extensive discussion from which the following findings emerged: (l)It is important to distinguish between communicative and interpretative forms of dialogue. (2)Thematisation activity is mediated by a number of dialectically related operations which are intrinsic to the interpretative project of psychotherapy. (3)Insight-oriented psychotherapy relies on the presence of the therapist as a dialogical partner and the therapist is not merely a facilitator of introspection on the part of the client. (4)The character of interpretation in psychotherapy may be understood in certain respects to be an elaboration of functions of the imagination. (5)The process of interpretation can be understood in relational terms and the variations of interpretative experience may be understood as variations of 'an inter-subjective interpretative ideal. (6)Understanding of certain forms of psychopathology is deepened when they are considered as variations of an ideal capacity to engage in interpretative dialogue. (7)It is possible to describe certain ideal conditions which are facilitative of interpretative dialogue and hence of the psychotherapeutic development of self-insight. In conclusion suggestions for further research were made. It was suggested that the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology provides an appropriate philosophical and methodological foundation for understanding the unique dialogical interpretative situation which is psychotherapy. The study emphasized, both in its content and in the manner of its execution, the need for interpretative efforts to be accompanied by methodological reflection and especially an awareness of how interpretative strategies partially constitute the realities they set out to describe.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1994
- Authors: Kelly, Kevin John
- Date: 1994
- Subjects: Insight in psychotherapy Psychotherapy -- Methodology
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:3199 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009515
- Description: The central aim of this study was to contribute to the understanding of the process of interpretation as it occurs in the context of a dialogue in insight-oriented psychotherapy. The literature review consisted of two parts. Firstly, the philosophical literature on the theory of interpretation was reviewed. A set of central philosophical issues was identified, which pertain to the psychotherapeutic project of interpreting the meaning of a person's experience in the context of a dialogue with that person. Secondly, the psychotherapeutic literature was reviewed. Previous attempts to conceptualise and prescribe processes of interpretation were described. The issues which appeared to be in need of further clarification were identified. A clinical study was conducted to further explore the questions raised in the literature reviews. A methodology was developed which gave access to the direct experience of both clients and therapists during the events of psychotherapeutic interpretation. The methodology yielded a description of the interpretative structure of the psychotherapeutic dialogue for each therapist-client pair. These were then consolidated into a description of general structural features of the psychotherapeutic dialogue. The results consisted of a description of processes and structural features which are intrinsic to the psychotherapeutic interpretation of the meaning of a person's experience in the context of a dialogue. The results were elaborated in an extensive discussion from which the following findings emerged: (l)It is important to distinguish between communicative and interpretative forms of dialogue. (2)Thematisation activity is mediated by a number of dialectically related operations which are intrinsic to the interpretative project of psychotherapy. (3)Insight-oriented psychotherapy relies on the presence of the therapist as a dialogical partner and the therapist is not merely a facilitator of introspection on the part of the client. (4)The character of interpretation in psychotherapy may be understood in certain respects to be an elaboration of functions of the imagination. (5)The process of interpretation can be understood in relational terms and the variations of interpretative experience may be understood as variations of 'an inter-subjective interpretative ideal. (6)Understanding of certain forms of psychopathology is deepened when they are considered as variations of an ideal capacity to engage in interpretative dialogue. (7)It is possible to describe certain ideal conditions which are facilitative of interpretative dialogue and hence of the psychotherapeutic development of self-insight. In conclusion suggestions for further research were made. It was suggested that the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology provides an appropriate philosophical and methodological foundation for understanding the unique dialogical interpretative situation which is psychotherapy. The study emphasized, both in its content and in the manner of its execution, the need for interpretative efforts to be accompanied by methodological reflection and especially an awareness of how interpretative strategies partially constitute the realities they set out to describe.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1994
A phenomenological investigation into the psychoanalytic psychotherapist's experience of identifying, differentiating and processing the patient's transference-based and reality-oriented reactions
- Authors: Danilewitz, Larry Mark
- Date: 1993
- Subjects: Reality therapy Transference (Psychology) -- Therapeutic use
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2960 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002469
- Description: The aim of this study was to describe the psychoanalytically-oriented therapist's experience of identifying, differentiating and processing the patient's transference-based and reality-oriented reactions. In order to investigate the therapist's lived experience of being receptive to the total communication of the patient in the analytic situation, the researcher adopted the empirical phenomenological method. This descriptive and intuitive method grounded the researcher in the concreteness of the everyday life-world of the therapist, and enabled him to explicate the therapist's immediate, pre-theoretical experiences of his patient. The appropriate central research question, formulated to elicit the experience of this phenomenon, emerged through the process of enquiry during the pilot study. Thirteen experienced, psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapists were interviewed and the five protocols considered most revelatory of the phenomenon under investigation were analyzed in detail. The remaining eight protocols were used to illuminate central themes and to clarify areas of uncertainty during the phase of formal explication. The central findings revealed that the oscillating process of the therapist as he shifts from being immersed in the world of his patient to being in a position of observation and self reflection is the fulcrum around which he evaluates the nature of his patient's communications. During this ongoing process of discrimination, living in duality, the therapist comes to experience himself as a patient scrutinized by his own and his patient's confrontations. His journey of disentanglement, the endeavour to differentiate his responses from his patient's actions, is dependent on his ability to engage in honest selfreflection and to access his pre-theoretical and articulated cognitions of his patient. This allows him to acknowledge his own role in what has unfolded interpersonally and to appropriate his previously denied feelings for and attitudes towards his patient, a prerequisite for the accurate and full appraisal of the nature of his patient's communications. Forsaking fixed judgements, the therapist becomes open to the confluence between the reality-oriented responses and transference-based reactions of his patient. This salient discovery, when dialogued with the literature, reinforced the theories of Greenson and Langs that not all the interactions between the patient and the analyst/therapist are transference-based and that it is therefore imperative that the analyst/therapist reflect on his participation in the analytic situation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1993
- Authors: Danilewitz, Larry Mark
- Date: 1993
- Subjects: Reality therapy Transference (Psychology) -- Therapeutic use
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2960 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002469
- Description: The aim of this study was to describe the psychoanalytically-oriented therapist's experience of identifying, differentiating and processing the patient's transference-based and reality-oriented reactions. In order to investigate the therapist's lived experience of being receptive to the total communication of the patient in the analytic situation, the researcher adopted the empirical phenomenological method. This descriptive and intuitive method grounded the researcher in the concreteness of the everyday life-world of the therapist, and enabled him to explicate the therapist's immediate, pre-theoretical experiences of his patient. The appropriate central research question, formulated to elicit the experience of this phenomenon, emerged through the process of enquiry during the pilot study. Thirteen experienced, psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapists were interviewed and the five protocols considered most revelatory of the phenomenon under investigation were analyzed in detail. The remaining eight protocols were used to illuminate central themes and to clarify areas of uncertainty during the phase of formal explication. The central findings revealed that the oscillating process of the therapist as he shifts from being immersed in the world of his patient to being in a position of observation and self reflection is the fulcrum around which he evaluates the nature of his patient's communications. During this ongoing process of discrimination, living in duality, the therapist comes to experience himself as a patient scrutinized by his own and his patient's confrontations. His journey of disentanglement, the endeavour to differentiate his responses from his patient's actions, is dependent on his ability to engage in honest selfreflection and to access his pre-theoretical and articulated cognitions of his patient. This allows him to acknowledge his own role in what has unfolded interpersonally and to appropriate his previously denied feelings for and attitudes towards his patient, a prerequisite for the accurate and full appraisal of the nature of his patient's communications. Forsaking fixed judgements, the therapist becomes open to the confluence between the reality-oriented responses and transference-based reactions of his patient. This salient discovery, when dialogued with the literature, reinforced the theories of Greenson and Langs that not all the interactions between the patient and the analyst/therapist are transference-based and that it is therefore imperative that the analyst/therapist reflect on his participation in the analytic situation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1993
A case study of narcissistic pathology : an object relations perspective
- Authors: Ivey, Gavin William
- Date: 1989
- Subjects: Narcissism Narcissism -- Treatment
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3188 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008453
- Description: The case-study method of psychological research was applied to the brief psychodynamic therapy of a narcissistically disordered female patient. The aim of this research was to explore, clarify and explain certain diagnostic and psychodynamic anomalies to emerge in the course of treatment, using a conceptual framework derived from select psychoanalytic object relations theorists in the area of narcissistic pathology. The author, discovering that there was no diagnostic or explanatory object relations model adequate to the therapeutic data, formulated his own diagnostic category narcissistic neurosis and an eclectic object relations model in order to explain the anomolous research findings. Narcissistic neurosis was defined as a form of psychopathology in which a primarily neurotic character structure presents with a distinctly narcissistic profile. The narcissistic false self-structure serves the functional purpose of protecting the psyche from a repressed negative self-representation derived from a destructive bipolar self-object introject. The primary etiological factor to emerge was that of a narcissistic mother conditional affection and self-object target child necessitated adaptive whose insensitivity, relationship with the premature self-sufficiency and the defensive emergence of a narcissistic surface self-representation. It was proposed that narcissistic neurosis and narcissistic personality disorder are two discrete forms of pathology differing in terms of severity, psychodynamics, defensive structure, mode of object relating, therapeutic accessibility and prognosis. Assessment criteria were proposed in order to differentiate the two areas of narcissistic pathology and assess suitability for psychotherapeutic treatment. Positive treatment results in this case-study suggest that narcissistic neuroses may receive long-term benefit from short-term psychodynamic therapy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1989
- Authors: Ivey, Gavin William
- Date: 1989
- Subjects: Narcissism Narcissism -- Treatment
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3188 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008453
- Description: The case-study method of psychological research was applied to the brief psychodynamic therapy of a narcissistically disordered female patient. The aim of this research was to explore, clarify and explain certain diagnostic and psychodynamic anomalies to emerge in the course of treatment, using a conceptual framework derived from select psychoanalytic object relations theorists in the area of narcissistic pathology. The author, discovering that there was no diagnostic or explanatory object relations model adequate to the therapeutic data, formulated his own diagnostic category narcissistic neurosis and an eclectic object relations model in order to explain the anomolous research findings. Narcissistic neurosis was defined as a form of psychopathology in which a primarily neurotic character structure presents with a distinctly narcissistic profile. The narcissistic false self-structure serves the functional purpose of protecting the psyche from a repressed negative self-representation derived from a destructive bipolar self-object introject. The primary etiological factor to emerge was that of a narcissistic mother conditional affection and self-object target child necessitated adaptive whose insensitivity, relationship with the premature self-sufficiency and the defensive emergence of a narcissistic surface self-representation. It was proposed that narcissistic neurosis and narcissistic personality disorder are two discrete forms of pathology differing in terms of severity, psychodynamics, defensive structure, mode of object relating, therapeutic accessibility and prognosis. Assessment criteria were proposed in order to differentiate the two areas of narcissistic pathology and assess suitability for psychotherapeutic treatment. Positive treatment results in this case-study suggest that narcissistic neuroses may receive long-term benefit from short-term psychodynamic therapy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1989
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